A Slowing Gulf Stream Current To Speed Up Climate Change

A new study has found that the Gulf Stream current will slow down and will have a significant impact on planetary temperature.

The Gulf Stream is an ocean current that brings warm waters from the Caribbean, up the U.S. east coasts and all the way to the UK which has a significant impact on keeping the UK warmer than it would be given its latitude.

Researchers say a slower current will carry less heat down to the deep oceans meaning more will enter the atmosphere.

The major concern with the slowing current is the fate of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), of which the Gulf Stream is part of. The AMOC is a system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean, characterized by a northward flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the Atlantic, including the Gulf Stream, and a southward flow of colder, deep waters that are part of the thermohaline circulation.

The research beliefs that if there is there is a sudden collapse of the Amoc caused by global warming, it could lead to a disastrous change in the worlds climate and increased warming

Over the last 100 years, records have showed that there have been changes in the AMOC but the trends that are being shown now are like nothing they have never seen. When the Amoc was at a minimum between 1975 and 1998, more heat entered the atmosphere and global temperatures gradually went up. When the current started to accelerate from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, and sink more heat it coincided with a so-called slowdown in the pace of global warming.

Now with the sudden slowdown since 2004, research shows that less heat will be going into the waters and more into the air, leading to higher global temperatures. And that is likely to continue.

The slowdown in the current is very unlikely to reverse in the current trend and it is expected to have a significant impact. With global temperatures expected to increase, countries like the UK will surely feel the change in the next 20 years but the impact on the ocean is extremely concerning as whole ecosystems will be devastated with the warming water.s